National system of final exams should not be shelved outright

Ardimas Sasdi, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Berkeley, California, ajambak@calmail.berkeley.edu

The fate of the national final exams for high schools, or UAN -- the main yardstick used to measure the performance of individual students and gauge the general quality of education -- is in limbo ahead of the examinations next month.

The movement evolved last year after the Ministry of Education unveiled a plan to raise the passing grade for the almost 20-year-old exams by one point from the existing 3.01 to a 4.01 average. A group of more than 20 non-government organizations gave the government a week to shelve the plan to hold the annual tests or face a lawsuit. This ultimatum is the toughest challenge yet faced by the government on standardized testing.

The critics, who consist of teachers' associations, private schools and education experts, say in a series of arguments that the planned UAN is in violation of National Education Law 2003 and is against the spirit of reform and the principles of decentralization.

Former rector of the Jakarta Teachers' Training Institute Prof. Winarno Surakhmad told Kompas last week the final tests should be conducted by schools and that nationwide testing could be done every three to five years if its goal were to get a map of schools' performance. As a regulator of education the government would serve only as a facilitator of the test, not as an organizer, he said.

According to Article 2 of Ministry of Education decree No. 153/2003, the final national exam, which is held simultaneously across the country, is aimed to collect information about the achievement of individual students and the quality of education as part of public accountability.

Article 3 says the testing is necessary as a means of quality control and as a selection criteria for students who will pursue their studies in higher education.

In line with the program of regional autonomy, the central government has gradually delegated its authority on education in certain areas, including organizing final exams for primary and secondary schools. This year's UAN, for example, covers only math, English, and the Indonesian language, while the rest are prepared by schools under the guidance of district education offices.

Education expert Arief Rachman, who is also chief of Unesco's national commission for Indonesia, said the final say on whether students pass the tests should stay in the hands of schools. He said he was aware some schools raised their grades to maintain their reputation and ward off criticism from the public.

The plan to raise a passing grade for the final tests at junior and senior high schools to an average of 4.01 from 3.01 for all subjects has sparked worries among many students and their parents but has been praised by others, who have long queried the low passing score, saying it degraded the examinations. With a 3.01 passing score most students pass the finals.

The list of UAN shortcomings is long and many are valid. One weakness is that the test is not tailored to different regional conditions. There are big disparities from one region to another in terms of physical infrastructure -- school buildings, libraries and laboratories -- the ratio of students to teachers and the wealth of students.

A one-shot, high-pressure exam is not only unfair, it also fails to provide accurate information about the ability of students as their performances during the exams are not just influenced by their preparation and ability to take exams but also by the state of mind of their exam invigilators and other technical problems.

These factors are usually not taken into account -- the scoring is done by computers, while the impact of failing the exams on students is devastating. Leading author and antitesting advocate Alfie Kohn in a book The Schools Our Children Deserve said students who failed from an early age are likely to avoid challenging tasks, lose interest in academic matters and think in terms of ability rather than effort. Failing also engendered a feeling of incompetence, if not helplessness.

The history of nationwide testing at junior and senior high schools is as long and controversial as the background of its birth.

The government abolished the national tests in the 1970s in response to a public outcry, which questioned the low percentage of students who passed the final exams. But it reinstated the test in the 1980s after improving their design and organization to improve the degrading quality of education at schools in many areas.

Ever since, reports have indicated an improvement in the quality of education in the country, especially at public secondary schools where over 60 percent of around 16 million students are enrolled. So remarkable is the progress that some public schools are now competing with and even surpassing top private schools run by Catholic and Protestant foundations, which are used as a barometer of education standards.

Not ignoring the proven role of the UAN in improving the quality of education and its noble motive to raise the average test score, the government must be honest and admit that many things need to be done to improve the testing. A one-point rise is still beyond the reach of many schools in the country.

The fears of students and their parents are reasonable and as a short-term solution the government needs to consider lowering the average pass or reverting to the original 3.01 score. In the long-run the government must establish an authoritative certification agency and an accreditation body for secondary schools like the National Accreditation Body for higher education, which has a duty to assess colleges and universities and report their progress regularly to the public stake holders.

The UAN is undoubtedly not perfect -- but it's not a bad option either. While the government is wise to listen to the voice of the people, it must not shelve the exam finals until a better alternative is found or a new mechanism of quality control is put in place.

The writer is a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley.